Today is the one year anniversary of our first walk through at our new property. At first look, the work required was daunting, to say the least. There were unhealthy smells coming from around two hideous bathrooms, the floors throughout were nasty and most needed total replacement. First floor windows were functionable and good for 1951, but had voids and to be best, would have needed total reglazing, paint and some new panes of glass just to get them up to 71 year old specs. The plumbing was a little sketch to say the least and it looked like it had been through at least a couple decades of not being cleaned. Our financial "resource base" was a little over 50K to invest, and the work looked like we could "afford" it if all the sweat equity was provided by our Directors and Volunteers. By the time April Fourth rolls around, the date we signed the mortgage, the home repairs should be complete and we can switch our focus to the greenhouses! ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. now has a site at which we will continue to teach classes, plant and restore the land, build healthy soil. Continuing to provide the same program we were going to do in th eremote Northwoods of Wisconsin, right on th eScenic Shortcut that millions take to Door County. Tourism is up 13% over pre pandemic levels and shows little sign of levelling off.
Our initial plan was to buy a large acreage, where nearly half was lowlying natural buffer to development. The parcel we found best suited to our goals (after two years of searching mind you) was taken off the market before we could complete an offer to purchase. In fact, we had not even gotten to walk the land, although from photographs and Google Earth, we could see how a physical plant could organically develop on the high ground, far from th ebeaten path. It was expensive for what we would have gotten but that also would present an unforseen negative, long travel times for our guests to get to the site! The site we have secured can do all of the things we needed for approximately the same amount of money. We are actually able to start out several years ahead of where we would be having bought blank land and building from scratch and because we spent frugally, getting a large amount of the physical plant pre-built, we don't have to do constant fund-raising! We are ready to host our first biochar class now, we just need to plan for a time that the most people can come.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1111+Clark+St,+Algoma,+WI+54201/@44.6076943,-87.4478729,3a,75y,347.5h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s0xA4GafyFFcwp3oBrtk5DQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x881d36ba58830fd1:0xd518aea10fdbec2!8m2!3d44.6080375!4d-87.4479921
Intead of having to cast a broad net over the landscape to get within reach of a million people, it would have required drives of three to five hours for many of our guests. Where we settled, we are less than an hour drive from over a million people and many millions more go by on their way to vacation!The carbon footprint of our guests will be virtually non-existent compared to what it would have been being so far out in the boonies and we can also offer fishing tour recommendations for fishing expeditions on Lake Michigan for our guests. If guests forgot anything, stores are a short walk away and the roads here may never be impassable. Up in the woods, we would have had to drive for miles on a sand road, or traverse the fields a half mile from the closest paved road just to get in or out. Settling on an existing place in the City of Algoma will serve everyone who comes and the planet far better than developing another place in the woods. We went from being virtually inassessible for many without transportation options to available to a million people within a one-day bike ride.